Monday, October 24, 2005

Control of the Internet

Strategy Page has a post on the UN, China and control of the internet:

The nation that has done the most to try and control Internet use, China, is also one of the major proponents for UN control of the DNS servers. China, it appears, is less upset over “U.S. control of the Internet,” than it is in building the “Great Firewall of China” a little higher. As a practical matter, the U.S. has no more influence over ICANN and the DNS servers than anyone else. The UN proposal is all about censorship, and paranoia that somehow, because the Internet basically grew up in America (it was invented by the U.S. Department of Defense, while the web portion was developed, initially, in Switzerland, by a British fellow working for a European research consortium), America “controls” it. The Internet was built to be out of control, and to survive a nuclear war. It will survive censors and UN takeover attempts.